by Logan Byrne
The clock started to tick away and the thirty minutes were up, before Xelia showed up and Charlie was able to pull the women off him and stick to the plan, which surprised me. I guess I couldn’t blame him, he wasn’t dating anybody.
“What did you find out?” I asked after we left the club and crossed the street.
“I found out that mortal women are sexy and I love dancing with them,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, you didn’t ask around about anything?” Xelia asked.
“What? No, I thought I was there to keep normal and party,” he said.
“You’re such an idiot,” she replied, shaking her head. “One of their goons hit on me, and I know you had the same thing happen,” she said to me.
“Yeah, I saw you after mine left. His name was Antony. I could tell he was trying to exude influence on me, which means these charms Faus gave us definitely worked. What did your guy want?” I asked.
“He tried to invite me for a drink in the back but I denied him. He gave me his number, though, and a card,” she said, handing it to me.
The business card was blank, except for a finely printed number on the front. There wasn’t a name, a business, an address, or anything else.
“It has to be something bad. I bet they trace the call and come take you,” I said.
“That sounds like something out of a movie, though, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Exactly, which makes it more horrifying. Maybe we could reverse it,” I said.
“And trace him? Then what?” she asked.
“Track this guy down and do what we have to for information,” I said.
“So we’re going to reverse the plan on them?” she asked, smiling.
“Yeah, but the difference is I’ll erase his memory afterward so he doesn’t even remember telling us anything,” I said.
“Let’s get the troops together, then. But I think we should come back again soon, for research and everything,” Charlie said.
“You just want to grind up on more women, don’t you?” I asked.
“Can’t blame a guy for that, can you?” he asked, smiling and shrugging.
•••
With the glow of a computer screen against my face later that night, I sat down and searched our computer database to try to find Antony somewhere, anywhere, where I could get more information on him. There were three vampires with that name in the city, but none of them matched his picture or information. I didn’t get it, though—was he new to the scene, or did he have somebody on the inside? I’d looked up Xelia’s guy as well, Robert, but he didn’t show up either. How was it that neither of them was in our system? I refused to believe they’d never had a run-in with the law. Maybe Kiren was protecting them somehow, or had somebody on the inside wiping their traces clean so as not to run any risk of suspicion.
I shut the computer screen, pulling out the business card Xelia had received and twiddling it around my fingers. I looked at the number. What was their master plan? Were they trying to build an army of vampires or take over New York? And what was the deal with kidnapping women? They didn’t serve the same purpose as men, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it all meant.
Even though I was at a loss, if there was one woman who was going to figure this all out, it was me—no matter the cost and no matter what it took.
7
“So you want me to do what now?” Faus asked, stroking his chin as Xelia, Charlie, and I stood around him.
“We need you to trace this phone number and find out where the guy is who has the phone,” I said.
“And why exactly do you need me to do this?” he asked.
“We need to question him,” Xelia said.
“Why not just call him and have him come down to the precinct?” Faus asked.
“We…can’t exactly do that just yet,” Charlie said.
“Undercover?” Faus asked.
“Unfortunately,” I said.
“Right now the phone is pinging in the magical realm, actually, and not in New York City. It looks like it’s close by here, but wait,” Faus said, adjusting his glasses and leaning towards the screen.
“What is it? What’s happening?” I asked nervously.
“It looks like he’s on the move. Get yourselves here,” Faus said, pointing to an alleyway two blocks from where the man currently was. “Teleport there and you can grab him just in time.”
“You guys ready?” I asked, pulling out my wand and twirling it around. I knew the area, an only somewhat crucial element of teleporting. Doing it without fully knowing your location could end with you going somewhere else, or even contorting or losing a body part, which wasn’t exactly on the agenda.
We twisted and warped, the path short and not as jarring as it was to London, but we shook it off and got into position. The sky was darkening, the sun retreating as night provided the darkness we’d need to avoid being seen. He must be on his way to the club, I thought. “Wait, put these on!”
I handed everyone the necklaces, Xelia barely getting hers on before the man walked past the small opening of the alleyway. She grabbed him, tossing him into the darkness, and his eyes turned red and his fangs came out. Charlie shifted, hiding his mortal form for good measure, before Xelia grabbed the man’s neck and pushed him against the wall.
“Who are you and what do you want?” the man hissed.
A string of spit connected his upper and lower fangs, his skin so pale it was almost gray. He pounded his fists against the brick wall. He was angry, there was no doubt about it, and we all had to be on high alert. This wasn’t Pokeshi or a normal perp—this was a dangerous and potentially hardened criminal who wouldn’t wince at ending our lives.
“Wait, you’re the girl from the club last night,” he said, shocked, looking closer at Xelia.
“Yeah, I’m that girl, and we need to talk to you,” she said.
“Baby, this wasn’t how I expected things to go, but I can definitely—”
“I’m not your baby,” she said, tightening her grip and choking him.
“Don’t kill him, we need him,” I said.
“Who are you working for?” Charlie growled, crouching in his jaguar stance.
“I work for a lot of people,” he replied sarcastically.
“Why are you kidnapping young women through your club?” Xelia asked.
“Now, where did you hear a rumor like that? I can assure you, we do everything legal and by the books,” he said, with a grin that only angered all three of us.
“I have a way to get inside his head and see every little memory he’s ever had,” I said, pulling out my wand and pointing it at his head.
“Hey, you better not!” he yelled, causing Xelia to squeeze harder.
“Are you sure you want to pull that card? It’s not exactly legal in this situation,” Xelia said.
“I have a feeling he won’t remember and be able to rat. Cranius Redundo,” I said, and my conscience was instantly transported into his memory. There was a long lifetime of memories to sort through. First I was transported to the early 1900s, and I saw a young boy looking in the mirror, as if it were me. He was poor, from a lower-class family, with holes strewn along his clothes. His skin was dirty, as if he hadn’t bathed in weeks, before he put on a wool cap to hide his oily, disheveled hair. The smell of the one-room apartment was enough to singe the hairs from my nose and make my stomach churn.
Then the scene changed and I flew past that, to World War II. I saw the same kid from before but older, though not too much, and fighting in the war. I didn’t sense any fear, though; the man whose mind I was in wasn’t scared of death, maybe because he was already dead at this point. He took pleasure in killing Nazis as he let them suffer before stealthily drinking some of their blood while his allies weren’t looking.
I had to shake it off, leaving every memory he ever had while trying to get closer to the present. Decades flew past, the ‘80s, the early 2000s, and then finally the present. I was now standing in fr
ont of him, like a ghost of myself looking at him from the outside, while he seduced a woman the same way he tried to seduce Xelia in the club. She was young, maybe twenty, wearing a crop top and a black skirt, slender, with blonde hair and green eyes. I knew she was under his influence as I watched her pupils grow in diameter.
“Where should I take her?” the man asked, his hand on the girl’s arm.
“She looks young and healthy, which is perfect for what we need her for. Take her to the incubator,” another man said, though his face was darkened.
“She’s a keeper?” the man asked, smiling, as if he would be rewarded for bringing such a beautiful woman into the mix.
“She’ll make a great mother, I’m sure of it,” the man said, letting a faint chuckle escape.
The memory fast-forwarded, and I was in a room where many women lay on beds with IVs connected to them. There was blood in the bags, and fresh bite marks on their necks. They were sedated, being fed blood to keep their fresh vampire bodies satiated while they rested and were prevented from turning violent, which was an obvious sign of a newly minted vampire. Their bloodlust was always insatiable right away, but this operation seemed to dampen that desire for death and blood.
I was able to leave the room, to leave this particular memory, as the hallway I walked down fragmented into shards, with black filled in through the spaces that I couldn’t piece together. I fast-forwarded myself, turning to a point where this man had entered the next room, where a new group of women were also lying on beds, but these women were in varying stages of pregnancy. What was going on here? The door opened behind me, a couple of doctors coming in and standing in front of one of the beds. “This one is ready to be induced,” one of them said.
“Are we sure her baby is strong enough?” another asked.
“They all serve a purpose for our master—to create a force so strong that nobody will stand in its way. She is ready.”
I felt myself starting to swirl and lose control as the room collapsed around me. A loud whistling sound filled my ears before I was pushed out and back in the alleyway with Charlie and Xelia while the man was rendered unconscious.
“What happened?” Charlie asked, catching me as I stumbled back. He held me up, the walls spinning slightly, before I took a deep breath and caught my bearings.
“I found out why they’re taking women,” I said, looking up at Xelia.
“What is it?” she asked, looking more scared than I’d ever seen her before.
“They’re incubating them and birthing babies for some kind of army,” I said.
“This is worse than I thought,” she said. “You better erase his memory and then we can go back.”
“Cranius Expellus,” I said.
•••
“So what does this mean, exactly? What’s the point of kidnapping women to impregnate them?” Charlie asked.
Xelia paced around her office, stoic, not offering a quick explanation. It troubled her, more than it should have, as if she knew something about it on a personal level. “Were the women, the mothers, vampires?”
“I believe they were, yes. They had bite marks, blood IVs, and they were all asleep,” I said.
“Babies, vampire babies, meaning ones born to a vampire mother and a vampire father, are generally more powerful than vampires that were changed. It’s rare, though, for a vampire baby to be born. It’s usually adults, or teenagers, who get bitten and changed,” she said.
“But vampires already have powers. Why not swipe people and just change them? Wouldn’t it be faster?” I asked.
“Faster, yes, but not more powerful. You see, a female who’s bitten and becomes a vampire is only able to conceive a child within seventy-two hours after being shifted. After that, she loses her ability to carry a child and give birth. That makes vampire babies quite rare, because most women who are bitten are able to get away or leave before that time period even begins, let alone ends,” she said.
“So what does this mean? An army of them?” I asked.
“Well, vampire babies grow up to be adults just like any mortal child, but at a much faster rate. They age one year for us for every one month being alive, but they stop growing after about twenty months, give or take. The reason why they’re going through this trouble, instead of just biting more mortals, is because babies born to vampires, while also being more rare, are more powerful as well. They’re stronger, faster, smarter, and their psychological powers are much more insane. Basically, they take the abilities and powers of three vampires and put them into one very capable body and mind,” she said.
“So they just want to take over everything? It’s a long-term plan, having them keep pumping in, their forces growing with the more women they get,” Charlie said.
“It sounds like that’s the plan. They’ll also continue to turn men and keep the women, to bolster their forces, but it sounds like at least part of his plan is to have the vampires, including the purebreds, be an integral part of his scheme to take over the mortal and magical realms. We should all be so lucky,” she sighed.
I didn’t know how to process the news. Knowing he was recruiting vampires was bad enough, but to create new ones who were essentially three in one? I could barely handle one well-equipped vampire in combat, let alone something three times as strong, three times as fast, and three times as cunning. Kiren was placing his cards on the table and they had to be stopped.
“What are our options?” I asked.
“Well, first we need some kind of proof. This kind of kidnapping and birthing operation would go down in an instant, assuming he doesn’t find out and meddle his way in to stop it. Obviously he doesn’t want it to go down. I’m sure he’s invested a lot of time and money into this,” she said.
“Then?” Charlie asked.
“Then we need to kill the babies,” she said, her quick answer as piercing as her expression.
“There has to be another way, I mean—”
“There isn’t another way, Lexa. This sort of act cannot stand, and the chances of us killing the offspring before they come into their powers is so much higher than catching them after they’ve fully matured. I know it sounds brutal, but it’s the only way,” she said, her arms crossed.
“I’m not sure I can do that—the act, that is,” I said.
“Then I will, and I know a few others who would love to make sure this doesn’t progress. Sometimes in war you have to do what’s necessary,” she said.
“We aren’t at war, though,” I said.
“Aren’t we? Think about it for a second, then tell me we aren’t,” she challenged me, her gaze and words sharp and stabbing.
“We have a lot to think about, it looks like. I’m hitting the hay,” Charlie said, yawning and stretching his arms. “We should just sleep on it and then worry about getting the proof we need.”
“I’m not throwing away your idea, Xelia, but I hope there’s another way,” I said, walking towards the doorway.
“I don’t think there is, Lexa,” she said, before I walked into the hall.
Maybe I had to try to think of what they would become, and not what they were now. I couldn’t always let my love of life win against a threat so dangerous that it could destroy everything I knew and loved in this world. Going through with this would be one of the hardest decisions of my life, but if it meant stopping Kiren, then it would be worth it. I just hoped this vision wasn’t wrong.
8
I awoke to a note from Mirian that he wanted to see me as soon as I’d gotten up and ready. The timing seemed odd, given what Xelia, Charlie, and I were up to, since it was something he might not fully approve of, especially with my spell last night. But I thought if it was urgent or serious he would’ve demanded me sooner. The fact that he was giving me my time meant that maybe I would be spared the royal reaming that would’ve come my way had he known what we were up to.
I got into my uniform, pulling my hair into a ponytail, before heading down the corridor to his office. The door was op
en, and I was surprised to see Blake standing there when I walked inside. “Close the door,” Mirian said.
“What’s going on?” I asked, shutting the door behind me. The lights were dimmed, the mood tense, as if something bad had happened.
“Chancellor Pote wishes to speak with you, and she’s asked me to give you that message. We need you to go back to the camp and see what she wants,” Mirian said.
“How would I do that, though? I have a job here, and—”
“Your absence will be taken care of internally, so there are no problems there,” Mirian interjected.
“How long will I be gone?” I asked.
“Heta said she needs you for at least three days,” Mirian said, his arms crossed.
Three days? I can’t be gone for that long, not in the middle of this investigation! We were gaining so much ground on the vampires, and I knew Charlie and Xelia couldn’t take anything on without me. What if they packed up shop and left? No, they wouldn’t do that; I was just being irrational right now.
“That’s a long time, Mirian. And why is Blake here?” I asked.
“He will be accompanying you on your journey. Heta asked for him as well,” he said.
“If that’s okay,” Blake said, glancing at me.
“Of course it is, I was just confused, this is kind of a lot to take in,” I said. “I don’t think Charlie will be too happy, we’re working a case, but I guess he’ll have to put up with it.”
“He will be fine, I’ll make sure he has other work to do and your assignment with him will be postponed until you get back,” Mirian said.
“Any idea what she wants?” I asked.
“No, but it must be serious if she wants to pull you out of the precinct to take care of it. I’m guessing it has something to do with your special ability,” Mirian said.
“When are we leaving?” Blake asked.
“Go pack a bag and be back here shortly. I’ll make sure you gain safe passage myself,” Mirian said, shooing us off with his hand.
